"Very nice," Tarrin admitted, taking it from him and looking it over.
"A brush? Tarrin, that's very thoughtful," Jula said sincerely. "My hair is a mess. If I felt it was safe, I'd kiss you."
"If you don't feel good about yourself, then you won't be as prepared as you can be to face your instincts," he told her calmly.
"Then let me put on a dress."
"Not when it will interfere with my other lessons," he said. "Just trust me about the dress, Jula."
"Alright, but only because you're giving me that brush," she said with a slightly teasing smile.
Tarrin paid the man for the brush, and handed it to Jula. "It's lovely," she said with a smile, running a padded fingertip over the carved back of it. "Thank you, Tarrin. You almost make me think you care."
Tarrin snorted. "Let's go," he said.
They walked for nearly an hour in complete silence. Jula pulled the brush through the snags in her hair mechanically as they walked, smoothing it and restoring it to the beauty that he remembered when she was human. People stared at them as they went by, even a few bands of the city's watch, but nobody challenged them, or so much as spoke to them. Tarrin spent that time alternating between watching the people, watching for any kind of sneak attack, and observing Jula. She seemed completely at ease now. There was no sense of her through the bond; she wasn't experiencing any one emotion strongly enough for it to seep through. The fear and anxiety she'd felt before their talk had evaporated, and he hoped that it meant that her fears had been eased somewhat. She invoked conflicting emotions in him, both anger and pain at the memory of what she did, and his paternal duty to protect her and prepare her for adulthood. The long talk had had an effect on him as well.
Jula wasn't quite what he expected. He thought she'd be more combative, less willing to embrace her new role, less eager to betray her former employers by giving away their secrets. But she had said it herself. She was a survivor. The memories he had of her reinforced that belief. She would do what she needed to do to survive. If that meant abandoning the ki'zadun, then that was what she would do. If it meant submitting herself to him, when she knew he didn't like her, then she'd do it. He didn't trust her, but his contempt for her had eased during the morning of interacting with her. He didn't trust her, not by a long shot, but he didn't find the idea of spending long hours with her as repugnant as it seemed a few hours ago. She proved to be intelligent, insightful, witty, surprisingly courageous, and just as charming as she had been when she beguiled his trust, then betrayed him. But this time he had the upper hand, because he had her bond. There would be no backstabbing this time. Jula was very charismatic, alot like Dar, and few would be angry with her for very long. That was a trait that had probably been very useful to her when she worked for the ki'zadun. A few impish smiles, a few light words, and her misdeeds didn't seem quite as serious as they had been before she began.
That also worked against her. She was a manipulator, cunning and dangerous, and he knew it. She had easily manipulated him into trusting her when he didn't really trust anyone, had even won the trust of his parents, who were not fools. She was very good. He would let her be nice to him, but he wasn't going to fall into that trap. Until he knew beyond any doubt where she stood, he'd be very careful around her.
That was one side. The other was the feelings he got from her through the bond. Her fear and anxiety were genuine. The anger she displayed towards her former employers was very genuine. Her terror of going mad again was so obvious that he didn't even need the bond to know that it was sincere. The relief she felt when she realized that he was going to help her was also genuine, as was the resolve he sensed from her. She was serious about being his bond-child and conquering her instincts. She would do whatever it took to stay sane. The question was what she would do after she didn't need him anymore.
In truth, he didn't care. When she didn't need him anymore, he would release her. He never had to see her again, and so long as she stayed away from him, they never had to cross paths. As long as she didn't go back to working against him, they could both live peacefully.
They stopped at an intersection and waited for a wagon to amble by, being pulled by a large, humped beast. "What do your instincts tell you right now?" Tarrin asked abruptly.
"Nothing," she replied. "Just to be careful. I feel...unsettled, being surrounded by so many humans. It's almost like they mean to trap us here."
"That's a normal reaction," Tarrin told her. "What have they told you while we were walking?"
"Nothing so strong it stood out," she replied after a moment. "It's hard to sense them through the barrier you placed. Things are clear only when they have a very strong reaction."
"That's going to change," he told her as they started walking again. "The weave will unravel as the days pass. Every day, the Cat will be stronger, and you'll need to learn how to cooperate with it every day, like it was the first time. After the spell wears off, you should be ready to achieve your balance. By then, you'll have an understanding of what the instincts tell you, and how to listen to them. There are just a few things you'll need to learn to help you cope."
"Like what?"
"You'll find out tomorrow," he told her. "Right now, we're going back to the circus. We'll have a long night, so we need to get some sleep."
"What are we going to do, exactly?"
"Hunt," he said with a strange eagerness in his voice. "Tonight, you see what all your instincts are geared to do," he told her. "By tomorrow morning, things are going to be much clearer."
He left her sleeping in Renoit's tent.
Jula. Stranger things had happened to him. Teaching her had brought him into closer contact with his own inner self, the Were-cat within him. Telling her the things that he had learned reinforced them in his own mind, and in a strange way, it was helping him as much as it was her.
He was feral. He knew it, he accepted it. In a way, he even preferred it. But there was a price, just like Triana said there would be. He had come to despise what he had become, because his feral nature had finally crossed the line of propriety to his human morality. For a very long time, his balance had been owned by his instincts, by the Cat. Now, his balance was beginning to shift, to sway back towards his humanity. It would never go all the way, but he didn't want it to.
He was a Were-cat. It may not have been how he was born, but it was what he was. He had accepted it long ago, because he didn't have a choice. Then he embraced it, because it hurt less than accepting it, to not feel responsible for the things he was doing, but the changes it created inside him caused him a pain that never made it feel right. Now, there was no more acceptance, no more embracing. It merely was. He was a Were-cat. It was what he was, and it was what he would always be. It had caused him pain, but it had also enriched his life. It had been a double-edged sword, cutting him more than once. He knew that, and he accepted it.
He could admit it. Whether he hated himself or he despised himself, it was what he was. And now that he admitted it, he could take steps to change it.
He didn't want to be anything other than a Were-cat. That much was plain to him. He had found his path. It was what he did as a Were-cat that he wanted to change. He accepted that he was feral, but he didn't want to end up like Mist. He didn't want to be totally dominated by his emotions, his rage. It was what he had attacked when he fought Jula, it was what he saw in her that struck a chord in himself. It was something towards which he had steadily been progressing. Faalken's death had intensified it, brought it out of him in a powerful display that he could no longer deny. Faalken had shown him what he was starting to become, and it was another reason for him to thank his departed friend. He had been on the path to total isolation, and that would have driven him mad.
It was still all so new. Just this morning, he had had his eyes opened to the truth about himself. He knew now what had very nearly befallen him. He couldn't change overnight, Jula had proven that to him, but at least now he knew what he was up against. He had to be
strong, like Mist. She had overcome her instincts and reached out to him. He was nowhere near as bad as she was, but he could do the same thing. Not to reach out to a stranger, but to reign in his rage, to tone down the aggression and anger. He would always be afraid of strangers, and the lives of those strangers would never mean as much to him as the lives of friends. He just wanted to be able to consider the consequences before he acted.
If that wasn't bad enough, now he had Jula to deal with. He felt the weight of that duty, but talking to her, explaining to her the secrets of living with the Cat, had eased his concerns as much as hers. Jula had a strong mind, and he was pretty sure that she could find her own balance. He had hopes that she could find a place in Fae-da'Nar. Spending a morning with her, talking to her, being exposed to her had shown him that he could control himself. He didn't like Jula, but he could supress it to fulfill his obligation to her, his duty. She was his child, and she was his responsibility. He doubted he'd ever like her, not like he liked his friends, but he could tolerate her.
Tolerating Jula. The one person to which he could point and blame for all his pain. Life was full of ironies.
Teaching her was teaching him, too. It was reconnecting him to his own nature, reminding him of who he was and what it meant to him. At least in that regard, he didn't regret taking her as his child. He only hoped that he could teach her as well as Triana, his own bond-mother, had taught him.
Tarrin found Allia sitting in the field, well away from the tents. The circus was performing, and every once in a while, he could hear the applause or gasps of delight issue from the huge performing tent. There were a good number of people walking around on the huge field, a park inside the city, but they gave Allia's place a wide berth as the Selani sat silently facing the setting sun, her face serene and her eyes closed. He sat down beside her without a word of greeting, waiting for her to respond to his presence.
"You're growing, my brother," she said in a serene voice. "Why did you take Jula? Why didn't you kill her?"
"I wanted to," he replied honestly. He had stopped hiding from her a long time ago. There was nothing he wouldn't tell her now, just as it had been back when they were in the Tower. "I was totally enraged. But when I had her down, when I had her, all I could see when I looked at her was myself. That's when it hit me."
"What?"
"That I was becoming what I hated the most," he said honestly. "If I would have killed her, I'd have become her. Only I'd be doing what I did because of conscious choice, not because I was mad."
"So, you finally see what I have always seen," she said, opening her brilliant eyes and smiling at him. "That you are not what you seem to be."
"I was what I seemed to be, sister," he said quietly, picking at the tip of his tail absently. "I can admit that. I was every bit the monster. And the sad thing is that even though I know it, I still don't know if I can change it. I don't really know what I want to change, but I need to do something. It won't be easy. That part of me is instinctive, and you have no idea how hard it is to control something when you do it before you think about what you're doing."
"Nothing of worth is easy," she told him.
"I'm worried, deshaida. I'll never completely control the rage. Triana told me that, told me that no Were-cat ever has complete control. I don't feel sorry about it when I kill someone that really deserves it. I'm just afraid of how I'll feel if I kill someone that didn't deserve it."
"Triana told you that the key to handling rage was learning how to not harm those you would regret harming," she said. "It sounds like your only problem is that you wish to be in control of who you decide to kill. That's what you're finding intolerable about yourself. Not that you kill, but that you don't know if you're killing people who deserve to die."
He nodded solemnly.
"That won't require a great change on your part, my brother," she smiled. "Look at Triana. She's nearly as bad as you when it comes to punishing people. The only difference is that she doesn't kill indiscriminately. The people she kills are killed because she had a good reason to do it. Could you live with yourself if you were like Triana?"
"Yes," he replied after a moment.
"Then that's what you need to focus on. All you need to learn is when to spare a life rather than when to take a life, just like when you spared Jula. Triana would not have killed Jula. She would be very, very angry with her, but she would not kill her. You did exactly what Triana would do, and I see it made you feel better."
"It did, in a weird way," he admitted.
"There you are," she said with a glorious smile. "It's not something to fret over for tendays, my brother. The easier you make a problem seem, the easier it is to solve."
"I guess so," he sighed. "It didn't seem that simple when I thought about it."
"You sought to transform yourself, and that is a daunting proposition," she smiled gently. "I know you, my brother, you yearned for what you were before you became a Were-cat, but you know deep inside that you can never be that again. You found you hated what you saw in yourself, and you felt that the only way to feel good about yourself was to completely change everything about you, unsure of which change would be the one to bring peace to your mind. Because you couldn't put your finger on exactly what most bothered you."
Tarrin sighed and nodded.
"But that's not what you need. You need your anger, and you need your mistrust. In what we're doing, they are very healthy traits to have. You need to be feral, my brother, and you need that killer instinct to give you the edge in this dangerous game we play. All you need to do is try to be like Triana. Ask yourself what she would do if she were in your position, then try to do the same thing. As long as you do that, you can't go wrong. You know Triana, my brother, you understand her and what she does. If you do the same thing she would do, then you have done the right thing."
Tarrin blew out his breath, then he looked to his sister and smiled. She was right. She was always right. She could see right into the core of his confusion, and see exactly what needed to be done to set his mind at ease. "Why is it that you can always sum up my life in one sentence?" he said gently, reaching out and taking her hand.
"That's easy, deshida. You're not all that complicated," she winked. "I know your heart, Tarrin," she said with a serious look in her eyes, but that same gentle smile. "It cries out to me of your pain, and it tells me what it needs to feel whole. I just tell you what your heart tells me to tell you, that's all."
He pulled her against him, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. He would be lost without Allia. She was so important to him, the rock upon which the foundation of his life was placed. Any time he felt lost or confused, any time he needed love and support, she was there. He loved her, loved her so deeply it defied rational explanation, a bond that sealed them together in ways few could even comprehend. "My heart thanks you, my sister," he said lovingly. "I love you."
"I love you too, my brother," she replied, putting her arm around him. "I love you too."
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Chapter 25
The night.
It was his time. It was their time. The time when the predators awoke and sought out their prey, the time when the blanket of darkness protected those who knew its secrets. The night was his friend, his ally, and it spoke to him in ways that no human could understand, whispers on the wind, caresses against his soul, light touches that reminded him endlessly of its presence. His every sense was open, active, at its peak, and he felt very much the master of his domain. He was king of this jungle, king of the night, the one that sat at the top of the pecking order. His mastery could not be challenged. Not by the humans, not by the thieves and other nightstalkers, not even by Jula.
Tarrin stood up to his full height and looked up at the White Moon, Dommammon, feeling its subtle song course through him. As always, now, he could see Miranda's cheeky face in the face of the largest of the moons, smiling down on him, making the song seem much more personal and uplifting than it would be for anothe
r Were-cat. The song of the moon excited his senses, made his instincts rise up within him and join with his conscious mind in a harmonious desire to do nothing but simply listen.
"What is it?" Jula asked curiously, looking up at him. The smaller Were-cat stood beside him on the roof, the very first roof she had climbed. It took her a moment to figure out how to do it. She had a Were-cat's body, but she had acted so much the human that she had never explored her newfound physical gifts. She knew she could jump great distances, but she had never tried. She knew she could climb as easily as a human could walk, but she never did it. He'd have to really work her to teach her about the physical limits of her body. They had some teaching to do tonight, and she had some learning. She leaned a bit closer to him, unconsciously, and her scent struck him. Bad timing, he supposed. Jula was reaching the peak of her fertile phase, and it was causing her to unconsciously advertise that fact in her scent. She didn't know she was doing it, but her interest was written all over her scent. Even now, just getting close to him was making it stronger in her scent. He was going to let that go on for a while, then sit her down and talk to her about it. See if she realized what was happening. He wanted to see how well she could control it, deal with it. Coping with what was a completely instinctual urge would be good for her, it would teach her how to let her instincts affect her behavior without taking over her rational mind.
"Look at the moon," he said in a serene voice. "Open your senses and look into its depths. The moon sings to us, Jula, it sings to all Were-kin. It's why most humans believe the myths about us. Open yourself to it and let it sing to you."
Tarrin Kael Firestaff Collection Book 2 - The Questing Game by Fel © Page 106
